


Chasing Rabbits: Team Cherno Alpha

by Spocksandshoes



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: A bit of schmoop, Action, Canon Het Relationship, Character studies, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Minor Character Deaths, Minor Violence, Sasha Kaidanovsky/Aleksis Kaidanovsky, Team Cherno Alpha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spocksandshoes/pseuds/Spocksandshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing the Russians ever did was gentle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing Rabbits: Team Cherno Alpha

**Author's Note:**

> First fic on A03! Woo!  
> Anyways, I wrote this drabble a few days ago, after seeing Pacific Rim because to be frank the Jaeger Pilots were the best thing about the movie and I'd love a novelization of a prequel or something just about the Kaidanovskies and the Wei Tang Triplets just hangin' out and kickin' ass.  
> Instead though, have a fic!

Nothing the Russians did was ever gentle.

It was the way they were, in their stride, and stature. In their facial expressions and fighting stances. Even their Jaeger was not as beautiful in design as the other Jaegers.

Cherno alpha was old and scarred. And strong.

It was blunt and brutal and violent in the actions they guided it to, and it fit them perfectly.

When they drank, it was in competition, empty glasses slamming down on the table in an off-beat rhythm, till one slumped in defeat.

One of the first times they met, Sasha drank him under the table. The next morning he found her nursing one hell of a hangover in the canteen, but she looked proud, and shook his hand when he offered it to her.

When they fought, it wasn’t with practice sticks and pulled punches like the other combatants. They went full-force, punching and kicking and driving the other one to the ground. They did not pull their punches on each other either, and it was remarked that the Kaidanovskies battling was something to see. Brute force and aggression, turning into something rhythmic and dangerous.

The first time they fought in the training grounds, he broke her nose.

The only thing that stopped him from asking if she was alright, was the warning expression on her face.

Sasha did not take apologies. And after she winded him in their next match, he considered the debt paid.

When they held each other, even that wasn’t gentle. His large hands gripped her hips and crushed her tight to his chest, and her arms wound around his neck, fingers digging into the muscle of his shoulders and leaving bruises. They held each other like they were on the verge of being ripped apart.

And that was when they were two separate people. In the drift, when they were one, they became Cherno Alpha. And Cherno Alpha was built to be as brutal and as fatal as its pilots.

But in that same drift, when the neural handshake was engaged, when they didn’t have to hold each other so tightly.. he saw the first time she ever got into a fight, with someone twice her age and size. She saw him at a funeral, hands clasped over a suit that was a little too small for him. He saw her fear of failure. She saw his personal goals warring with his sense of duty.

There, in the drift, they didn’t have to fight so hard against everyone else and themselves.

So there, in the drift, it was almost gentle.

They never said they loved each other aloud. They didn’t have to. Every time the neural handshake was engaged, he felt her need to curl around him and protect him from the world. And she saw through his eyes what he thought when he looked at her.

When you were that close, you didn’t need words.

And when the conn podd was filling with water and they were blinded and crushed and hopeless, dragged under the water by tearing Kaiju claws and teeth… water was filling her mouth and lungs and she could feel him thrash as he felt it too. There was a wrenching pain in his arm and it spiked, sharp and agonising in her mind.

They were in pain and dying- their death as violent as their life had been.

But it was okay, in a way. Because they were dying together. They went down with their ship, or they won. And today they weren’t winning. So Sasha let herself do something that they had never let themselves do, just in the last few moments before her oxygen ran out.

She chased the rabbits, and she felt Aleksis let go and follow her into the abyss.

There were tangled images of all the things they’d said and done- how they met, how they married, how they fought.. and then one image that had never happened- and would not have happened even if they had won- but Aleksis was thinking of it, something that he had always held dear to his heart and something that she saw often in the drift, but had never mentioned.

The image was a blurred one, cracked and faded as her husband died, but it was there, none the less. It was of her, dressed in her army casuals, back in their bunk at the Vladivostok Shatterdome. And him, crouching and framing her sides with his hands as she rested a hand in his hair. His forehead rested against the small bump of her stomach. And he was smiling. Aleksis never smiled. He wasn’t gentle enough for such an expression.

But here, at the end of the world and the end of their lives, the one thing he chose to show her was the most gentle, sweet thing possible.

She reached for the image, and then there was a wrench, a bright light, and a surge of power, and Alexsis was torn from her in the Drift.

There was a scream that was choked by the water.

The image broke and faded, and then everything went black.


End file.
